The Kinetic Imagination

A triple-height atrium of timber, curves, and shifting perspectives brings Carlo Scarpa’s spatial philosophy to life within a Nanjing townhouse by DHaus.

Carlo Scarpa spent his career treating the threshold as a design problem — the moment between one space and another, between outside and inside, between the old and the new, as something worth dwelling in rather than simply crossing. It is a philosophy that DHaus carried into a townhouse interior in the historic Mendong district of Nanjing, China, translating Scarpa's three governing principles — craftsmanship as architectural language, the dialogue between existing and contemporary elements, and the choreography of movement through carefully controlled sequences of space, light, and views — into a layered residential environment for a development of fifty townhouses in old Nanjing.

The commission arose from a chain of connections characteristic of design practice at its most organic. DHaus had presented furniture pieces in Le Marais; a private client who acquired one of the studio's tables subsequently commissioned a penthouse interior near the Pompidou Centre; the spatial concepts developed for that Paris apartment — a residential approach built around the relationship between furniture, architecture, and experience — informed the direction of the Nanjing project when a Chinese developer invited the studio to design the interior of one of the completed residences.

Through the integration of crafted materials, curved volumes, and carefully sequenced circulation, the townhouse creates a domestic environment structured around movement, perception, and material expression.

Three initial spatial concepts were developed: a library, a gallery, and a sculptural interpretation derived from the Paris commission. Rather than choosing between them, DHaus combined all three into the final design, organised around a triple-height atrium that extends vertically through the house and gradually opens as it rises — combining the material warmth of the library concept with the curved geometries of the gallery approach. Timber, curved volumes, and crafted details accumulate across the floors, creating a domestic environment structured around perception and movement rather than conventional room-by-room division.

At the centre of it all is the staircase. Its first step is deliberately enlarged — a spatial gesture that references Scarpa's own treatment of thresholds and stepped forms, the point at which movement slows enough to become conscious of itself. In a house built around the idea of choreographed circulation, the staircase is not a means of getting from one floor to another. It is the architecture's central argument.

Key takeaways

• DHaus organised the Nanjing Townhouse interior around a triple-height atrium that gradually opens as it rises, combining three initial spatial concepts — library, gallery, and sculptural — into a single layered environment built around the choreography of movement, light, and material warmth rather than conventional room division.
• The project draws directly on Carlo Scarpa's three principles: craftsmanship as architectural language, the dialogue between existing and contemporary elements, and the careful sequencing of space and views — applied across timber volumes, curved geometries, and crafted details throughout a historic Mendong district townhouse.
• The sculptural staircase functions as the interior's central architectural argument: its deliberately enlarged first step references Scarpa's treatment of thresholds, making the act of moving through the house a spatially conscious experience that slows perception at the moment of transition between floors.